pano (Mdz43r)
This element for the verb "to cross over" (shown with a footprint) has been carved from the compound sign for the place name, Texopan. This is a single black footprint, from a left foot, horizontal, and heading to our right.
Stephanie Wood
This is the same type of print that is shown on maps to indicate roads, trails, or pathways, given that it indicates human movement across a landscape. In the compound from which this footprint derives, however, it provides the phonetic value for the locative suffix -pan (meaning on or in). When the footprint appears above another glyphic element, it represents the verb pano (shortened to -pan, on), as it does here. In other glyphs, where it appears below another glyphic element, it is referring to a road (otli), and provides the phonetic "yo" (referring to a place characteristic of that other thing, full of it, having a lot of it). [See Gordon Whittaker's discussion of this in Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphs, 2021, 100.]
Footprint glyphs have a wide range of translations. In this collection, so far, we can attest to yauh, xo, pano, -pan, paina, temo, nemi, quetza, otli, iyaquic hualiloti, huallauh, tepal, tetepotztoca, totoco, otlatoca, -tihui, and the vowel "o." Other research (Herrera et al, 2005, 64) points to additional terms, including: choloa, tlaloa, totoyoa, eco, aci, quiza, maxalihui, centlacxitl, and xocpalli.
Stephanie Wood
c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest
Stephanie Wood
foot, feet, travel, crossing over, traveling, footprints
pano, to cross over, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/pano
on
Stephanie Wood
Codex Mendoza, folio 43 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 96 of 188.
The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, hold the original manuscript, the MS. Arch. Selden. A. 1. This image is published here under the UK Creative Commons, “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License” (CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0).